When the sound of the wheels of the train echoed in my ears, I heard a Rachmaninoff concerto exhibiting its influence and power. A microphone translated its implications, presenting me with a transcript. Then station to station, I fooled myself into denying the music as a feint. But no feint found me that day or later as I conjugated ambition to follow such vital notes. Difficult, yes. Difficulty plays instruments, conjugates many verbs, builds viable languages....
I had a red dress, not fire-engine red but red-red enough to curl the curlicues upon the material into an Oriental design like the musk of the semi-tropics distilled into a perfume. Scent, scent. I would have the scent of that mood, of white monkeys there jumping from tree to tree with no one to shout at them. What impunity. What imps. What Oriental and impalpable imps to stir the mood of musk, of the curlicues of that red dress, a loner in my wardrobe of Western stock....
In memory of my mother, who was one of the orphans at Ghazir The battle was within and without kinder minds caught in the World War I frame. Ideals seem to have been lost along the stony path of fate children tread in that museum of orphans in Armenian, in Greek, and in Assyrian. Traveling from Switzerland, Dr. Kuntsler read beyond the vagaries of violence, beyond the ripping of pregnant bellies, the starved desert marching, the celebrating guns that wore the Ottoman seal....
If a lamb were born in Armenia where it realized its innocence, would it be of the same heredity of genes and mystical whys as I? Would the cells of its nourishing blood be stamped Yerevan, the capital city, or would they decry the lost one slightly to the west? Would it imbibe pride with every drink of water as the people do? Or would it be the lamb that a mother calls– karnoog, she might say while patting affection’s fur– to a child with scrawny legs, hoping that home will be her religion?...
They ask me to be involved. I send 50 blankets, 100 bars of unscented soap and 1000 pencils for schoolchildren. I can’t send my shock. They ask me to shed tears. My river overflows. My dry eyes sigh. My morning juice sours. I see double sometimes. They ask me to spread the word. I type too fast. My images are pasted on the past. My daily trek is vexed. Memory still consults my mind....
Time to forget nature’s mannerism and remember that earth is not an enemy. Time to recommend soil that gobbles seeds and gratifies us with the command of plants. Time to plant our reprimands and gather the green of their leaves for an appreciation. Time to suspend the negative moments like dangling participles to a sentence that will obey. Time to repair the crafts that need new glue; even flour mixed with water will do....
Shall we turn to blogs, I asked, cybervision like a knapsack on my aging back? I’ll write of the many countries that have weighed upon me, one taking my arms and another taking my legs another my taking my head. Altogether they’ve used my conscience for their bed. I spilled hope of dry afternoons on the child that was Turkey and changed its face to Syria. They are strangers to me now....
or Aram, foundation of the Armenian roster of names. The living room that served my teens served me your melodies, 33 rpm records spinning a hypnosis to sweeten my coffee. I filed the melodies alphabetically–Gayane and Masquerade then– imagining ballets with toes of Armenian lore and boots of Caucasian dances. The intonations tended to me when convenience was curt or when my mother knitted acrylic or wool for afghans. My responses were carded and sheared and ready to spin the wool of negatives into something cool....
Did you bring me a handful of soil from the homeland, forgetting that it’s earth from the same planet as the American, not Venus nor Mars nor Saturn but only dark soil with its own minerals– the old kings and queens still meting out memories like party favors, the sisters directing the roundness of eternal bread, the brothers coaxing the seeds with unlearned plow and buffalo, the merchants mingling with magnificent ships?...
of Armenian words, their 39 swords, their 39 favors, locked fingers in the group like 39 dancers. They’d never forget the songs like lullabies in and out of mountain crags, on pollinated afterthoughts, in the rain of chance, in the clearing after snow. They’d never forget the enchantment of candles stacked like stems with fire the flowers, fire the ancient worship of a simpler earth. Even the earthquake learned the 39 letters and all the words that spelled a fractured vista, learned the dances too, the chances of blankets, the trances of food....
I set Armenian miniatures On a table before me, Their colors not muted by years, their shapes worshipping centuries. Their kneeling figures spoke to my fears, words they might have uttered not always teaching by treading lightly. The application of haloes was faded in scope but not in hues transfigured by their original approach. Reds and blues dominated and conformed to the brush as dark gold of haloes drew the symbol of circles....